Casey Chan

Pandora wants you to know that Pandora is good for music because it pays artists millions and millions of dollars for their songs. Take Drake and Lil Wayne, they get nearly $3 million each a year. And Pandora wants to pay them more.

According to Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, Pandora will pay over two thousand artists $10,000 each over the next 12 months. Yeah it's not a milli a milli for every artist but that's still a solid chunk of change! The top dogs in music obviously get a lot of money:

Drake - $3 million

Lil Wayne - $3 million

Coldplay - $1 million

Adele - $1 million

Wiz Khalifa - $1 million

Jason Aldean - $1 million

Rascal Flatts - $670,351

Ellie Goulding - $609,046

Zac Brown Band - $547,064

Mumford & Sons - $523,902

Iron & Wine - $173,152

Bon Iver - $135,223

George Winston - $85,239

The Four Tops - $65,173

But lesser known artists are getting paid too. Artists I've never heard of like Donnie McClurkin, French Montana or Grupo Bryndis (who rank 4,752, 17,000 and 183,187, respectively on Amazon) are each collecting $100,000-$138,000 a year from Pandora. Pandora is happy to pay these 'performance fees' to artists but the RIAA and Congress keep trying to make it harder for internet radio stations to succeed. Sigh. Artists getting paid good money for their own music would be something the awful RIAA would be against. [Pandora via Business Insider]